Eye of the Cat (1969, David Lowell Rich)

Eye of the Cat is what happens when you have a screenplay entirely concerned with being a thriller (by Joseph Stefano) and a director, Rich, who is completely incapable of directing thrills. There’s nothing else to the script, so the actors don’t have anything to do, and pretty San Francisco scenery only goes so far. Especially given how poorly Rich presents it.

Michael Sarrazin plays a blue blood left without a fortune who spends his time as a lothario. Gayle Hunnicutt is the mysterious woman who, without much coaxing, convinces him to return to his still-wealthy aunt’s home to get in her will and then murder her. Stefano’s script might have originally been for television–Rich’s direction is certainly more appropriate for it–but there are some frequent lurid details added.

Including Sarrazin’s relationship with the aunt, played by Eleanor Parker, being deviant. Stefano’s script goes out of its way to make everyone as unlikable as possible, whether Parker as a disturbed woman who manipulates Sarrazin (while rejecting a similar arrangement with Tim Henry, as his younger brother) or Sarrazin as a would-be murderer, while still making them vulnerable. Parker’s got emphysema, Sarrazin has ailurophobia (a fear of cats); neither has enough of a character, though both try hard.

Hunnicutt’s unlikable and mostly annoying. She’s not exactly bad though. She just has a terrible character. Same goes for Henry.

Between Parker and Sarrazin–combined, they get the most screen time, but never enough–there could’ve been a good movie in Eye of the Cat. So long as Stefano got a significant rewrite and there was a different director. With just a competent thriller director? Cat could’ve been a creepy modern Gothic.

Instead, Sarrazin and Parker have to keep it going–even through a particularly rough courtship montage through swinging sixties San Francisco–until the third act. Stefano’s got such a strong third act, not even Rich’s direction can screw it up. Though Stefano’s denouement doesn’t work, sending Cat on a lower note than it should.

★

CREDITS

Directed by David Lowell Rich; written by Joseph Stefano; directors of photography, Russell Metty and Ellsworth Fredericks; edited by J. Terry Williams; music by Lalo Schifrin; produced by Philip Hazelton, Bernard Schwartz and Leslie Stevens; released by Universal Pictures.